


Miracles

by musingsoftheephemeral



Series: Mentalist/Curseworkers AU [1]
Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Childhood, Curseworkers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 00:25:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7553047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musingsoftheephemeral/pseuds/musingsoftheephemeral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst thing about being a Jane, Patrick thinks, is that everyone thinks you can pull miracles out of nowhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracles

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This is inspired by the lovely agxntvanpelt over on tumblr, who not only gave me the idea for this but also read through this and encouraged me to post this up. Please check out her Mentalist/Curseworkers post for more information on this universe: http://agxntvanpelt.tumblr.com/post/147581702274/the-mentalist-curse-workers-au
> 
> The Curse Workers series is a YA trilogy written by Holly Black. I seriously recommend you check it out - she has created a fascinating universe to play around with and the plot is fantastic. 
> 
> Basically all you need to know about the Curseworkers universe is: 
> 
> 1\. A small group of people have the power to curse other people through touching their bare skin. There are several types, which are: death, dreams, luck, transformation, memory, emotion and physical. 
> 
> 2\. Every time a curse worker performs a curse, there is something called blowback. Blowback means that the curse worker suffers as well for performing the curse - for memory workers, they lose a memory, for emotion workers, they slowly become more emotionally unstable, etc. 
> 
> 3\. Curse workers are very often associated with criminals, and especially with con artists (like the Janes!) 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own neither The Mentalist nor the Curseworkers universe. 
> 
> There you go! Hope you enjoy, and please R&R!

The worst thing about being a Jane, Patrick thinks, is that everyone thinks you can pull miracles out of nowhere.

Someone has been banging on the Airstream door for the past minute. He puts his book face down open on the couch, and quickly slides off to tug the door open. At the last moment he pulls back to snag his discarded gloves off the stove, and hurriedly puts them on. He barely gets the right one on before Danny Ruskin is in front of him, face pleading and desperate.

“Man, you gotta help me!”

“What is it now?” The left glove is clenched between his teeth, so it comes out half-garbled. Danny rears back at the sight of his bare hand. “Shit! Watch that!”

Patrick finally gets both hands covered, and he can see Danny’s shoulders relax, just a notch. “What is it, Danny?”

“I screwed up again. Big time. I can’t go back in, you know I can’t. They’ll try me as an adult this time, and I can’t do that, Patrick. _Please_.”

“Which con was this? That old lady down on Fremont?”

Danny twists his hands together in a frenzy. “Nicky said she was an easy mark, I didn’t know she’d be all paranoid and go batshit crazy on me. She chased me down half the road - that walking stick is a goddamn lie - and I know she’s gonna call the cops. You’ve got to make her forget, Patrick, _please_.”

Patrick feels an uneasy weight settle on his shoulders. He knows that curse work is what keeps him useful around here, but that doesn’t mean that he likes it. Even though he is supposedly _special_. “Alright, where is she?”

Danny whooshes a sigh of relief. “Okay, just follow me, I’ll, um, show you who she is and you just, y’know, walk past her and do your thing. Yeah?”

“I know how to do the job, Danny.”

Patrick slips out of the trailer and locks it up. It’s a bright summer afternoon, perfect for the carnival. Lots of marks. His father will want him back soon, especially once the evening crowd starts coming in. His gloves feel hot and uncomfortable, chafing against his sweaty palms. “Let’s do this. Quickly.”

It’s practically second nature now, blending into crowded streets, locating the mark. As he draws closer, the glove comes off, smoothly, and with a light brush of his fingertips on the elderly woman’s mottled wrist, he is gone. Just another passerby. But that is all he needs.

Danny meets him two streets down. “It’s done?”

Patrick sucks in a breath. “Yeah.”

As always, he waits to see if something happens. For some memory to disappear. Maybe he’ll forget tomorrow’s grocery list. Or the 50th digit of pi.

And as always, there is nothing. His memory palace remains as intact as ever. _That’s my boy_ , he can hear his father say. _The Boy Wonder_.

Patrick knows that he is different from the other curse workers. That’s why everyone comes to him to get their memory work done. _There’s no blowback_ , they whisper in wonder. _The best of both worlds_. All the power and none of the karma. Patrick doesn’t think so. One day, the blowback will hit him and it will hit him hard, hard enough to cover the hundreds, maybe thousands of memories he’s erased. Maybe he’ll forget who he is altogether. Maybe instead of losing his memory gradually, inch by inch, it will all just disappear. In an instant.

Sometimes he thinks, that doesn’t seem too bad. Losing his identity and starting on a fresh slate.

But he’s a Jane, and the Janes do curse work. That’s the way it’s always been, and always will be. He can’t let go of that.

* * *

 

The day Patrick performed his first curse, at age twelve, his father had laughed and ruffled his hair. “That’s my boy. You’re a real Jane, now.”

Everyone told him that there would be blowback, that he had to watch out for it. “It’s not like death work or transformation. The blowback’s not so obvious. One day you’ll just realise, that you can’t remember where you lived as a kid, or that you forgot your mother’s name. It’ll just slip out.”

Terrified of losing his memory, he paid more attention than ever to the construction of his memory palace. With every curse he worked, he would go home and frantically run through the fairgrounds of his mind, mapping each and every detail to make sure he hadn’t lost anything. Following the advice of other memory workers in the carnival, for the first few months he wrote down everything in notebooks, kept post-it reminders scattered around the Airstream, until his father got fed up of the brightly-coloured sticky ‘pieces of shit on my shoe’ and threw them all out.

But nothing happened. Curse after curse after curse, and he forgot nothing. It was almost frustrating, as if he was constantly on tenterhooks. Waiting to find out what he was supposed to have lost.

Alex Jane, in contrast, was delighted to find that his son suffered none of the side-effects of curse work. That just meant that Patrick could work more curses, much, much more, than the average curse worker. And Alex could profit from that. Alex, like most of the carnie folk, was a luck worker. It was difficult to sell his services when half the carnival could do the same thing. And well, everyone could use a bit of luck here and there, but people paid big bucks for the real stuff. Death, transformation, memory. So Patrick became his golden ticket. His Boy Wonder.

“You do miracles, my boy,” he chuckled. “You’re a miracle worker.”

* * *

 

Karma is a bitch.

It was meant to be a simple con. Turn on the charm, some cold-reading here and there, manipulating the emotions of rich old ladies. Patrick Jane might not be an emotion worker, but he could play people’s hearts like an accordion when he wanted to.

Instead, now he was kneeling on the dusty road, his leather gloves slippery with blood. _Shit_. _Shitshitshitshitshit_. Where was Danny? Had he gone to call an ambulance?

The girl lying on the road gasped and choked, blood leaking from her nostrils and her mouth, staining her teeth red. “Oh my god, please don’t die please don’t _pleasedon’tdie_ …”

She was pale and clammy. Her pulse was erratic, growing weaker and weaker, fluttering on and off like a butterfly struggling in a spider’s web. Her short, sharp breaths grew further and further apart. Panicking, Patrick looked up and down the road. There was nobody. He ripped off his gloves and flung them to the side. “Everything’s going to be alright, OK? Just keep breathing. Look into my eyes. Breathe in...and out. In...and out.”

Slowly, his soothing voice lulling the girl, he peeled off her lacy gloves, once white but now crimson. His trembling fingers clasped her hands together, then gripped them harshly. Her bare skin was cool to the touch, colder, much colder than he ever thought. “Just...leave this all behind. Forget the pain. Forget what happened tonight. OK? You’re going to be fine. You’re gonna be alright. I promise. Just look at me, and breathe...”

He stayed with her that way, their bare hands entwined, until her eyes grew glassy and he could no longer feel her heartbeat against his palm. He tore his gaze from her lifeless stare and fled down the road.

 

* * *

 

 

Patrick didn’t even think about blowback until he was lying on the couch later that night. It wouldn’t be the first time his father’s snoring had kept him awake (there really weren’t much options for soundproofing in an Airstream). But the image of the girl, her eyes like marbles, bore into his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating on counting his breaths; _breathe in, one. Breathe out, two_.

The sound of her frantic, harsh breaths filled his mind, his own words repeated back: _Breathe in...and out. In...and out. Look into my eyes_ …

There had just been so much blood. Blood on her face, blood on her clothes, blood on his hands. No matter how hard he tried to block the girl out of his memory, it wouldn’t disappear. In fact, the more he tried, the more clearly the memory repeated itself, over and over in his head.

 _How ironic it is_ , he thought bitterly, _that the very person who makes memories disappear, can’t make his own go away_.

Then a thought struck him. _It wouldn’t hurt to try. There’s no blowback, anyway_. Peeking over at the fold-out bed, he made sure that his father was well and truly fast asleep. Then, hidden under the blankets, he used his left hand to pinch the forefinger of his right glove. Inch by excruciating inch, he gradually exposed the bare skin of his hand. He did the same with his other hand.

His bare hands looked strange, he mused. Naked. He was so used to seeing them clothed in hard, sturdy black leather. It seemed wrong, these flesh-coloured appendages. They looked too skinny, his fingers. They felt vulnerable, open. It seemed impossible that they could wield such power.

Cautiously, he used his right hand to touch his left wrist. _Forget...just let me forget_ , he willed. _Let me sleep_. He pulled the gloves back on and turned on his side, shutting his eyes.

The girl’s dead face was burned into his eyelids. Her jaw was slack, blood dribbling from the corner, and her eyes…

Patrick gasped and sat up. He closed his eyes again. She was still there, more vivid than ever before. It was as if he had been cursed to remember her for all eternity.

Curse.

He was cursed. That’s what it meant to be a curse worker. You cursed others, and in turn damned yourself, in the form of blowback. You paid dearly for cursing others.

But Patrick, who thought that he could bear the cost of losing his memory, didn’t realise that his blowback denied him what he most desired - the ability to forget. Finally, he was paying the price for his sins. He wasn’t a miracle boy. He was cursed.


End file.
